Went back to Ginnie yesterday, my plan was to do some stage handling/swimming practice, and hit the Catacombs. So I geared up and hit the water. I forgot how bulky stage diving was, but I made it to the eye dump my deco bottle and work my way down the chute. I found it a lot harder to do with a stage as you had to be further away from the rocks, so you don’t get as much arm movement or reach with your pulling.
While a little harder I did make it to the Lips fairly quickly, there I chose the arrow there to run my live off of. So I dumped my stage behind it, and tied my line into the arrow, and down to a rock so it quickly dropped to the floor as I wasn’t planning to garrote any DPV divers today. Once in the Catacombs, I forgot how much running a line sucked, particularly in the sandy sections where there were few rocks to do placements on. But despite a couple of incorrect turns (“Oh wait, that is my line!”), I made it to the exit at the bottom of the chute. Tying my real in, and dropping a cookie to indicate exit direction. Thinking back I should’ve dropped a REM.
I head back up through the gallery to the start of the line. And swam the Catacombs. Other than last week where we flew through it, this was my first time in the Catacombs since I did line work with Reggie. Of which I spent most of the time behind a mask. I was seriously surprised about some of the rooms I was in, they were quite large. Probably a good 10-15 feet high largely the untoched black rock you see in the lower traffic sections of Ginnie. I had the two Canadians I was diving with last week, took time to appreciate it because I was running the same route, and when we did it we didn’t stop like I did. Also the tunnels seem a lot larger than I remember. I felt like I was squeezing through them in training. Now it was just like a normal tunnel for me.
A couple of funny things, I think a catfish was trying to kill me. As it dragged my line off the placement I did, and into a line trap. All while I was watching, it was probably planning to do silt angels to silt the place up. Also I found a pork rib pretty far into the Catacombs, I just imagine a catfish dragging that thing into the cave.
After three trips through the catacombs and back up the gallery, I had been there for well over an hour and was in deco. So I figured I would wrap it up before I got more than a few minutes of an obligation. So I started to start reeling in the line. If I thought laying the line sucked, reeling it in was even worse. Without a buddy I didn’t have anyone to light things up for me. So if I do this again I might have to consider a Mexico style helmet or figure someway to put a small light on my mask strap. And I’ll be honest the Divesoft reel didn’t impress me, it didn’t feel as smooth as my Diverites, probably because of the diameter of the reel was larger than the Slide Locks. And it sucked even more in the Gallery having to deal with the flow while reeling in. But I survived and got my reel put away, and finally got my stage bottle back on doing the gas switch.
Swimming back to the eye I stopped to look at the Sand Dollar/Sea Biscuit in the wall, unfortuntely I also noticed the graffiti just around the corner from it.
I made my way up the chute and stop in that one stop to move my stage bottle around in preparation for picking up my deco bottle. I noticed a lot of lights flashing in the Eye, so I figured a team entering but was waiting for me. So after I switched to back gas, I covered my light for a good 30 seconds hoping that would let them start their entry. They didn’t start so I turned off my light completely while I finished doing the stage clean up and swap. When I was almost done with it, I see a hand with a safety reel and back up light poke down from the rock above, cavern divers. Thankfully that was all that poked down, as I didn’t want to have to stop them.
I stop and do my deco in one of the alcoves in the eye. Being cheap I figured I would do the swim back on my stage, as I have a huge fill card at a local dive shop for nitrox, so it is very cheap. But in the time it took me to swap the tanks over and do a proper gas switch I probably wasted more gas than just swimming back.
The swim back was uneventful, but as I was standing at the stairs working up the energy to take things off and pull my tanks out of the water, I realized I probably have 200lbs of gear on. How did I get here from a single AL80 and a shortie? Though I wouldn’t have imagined doing 2 hour dives like they are just another Tuesday.